Environmental Report 2009
Cutting our air travel. Burning wood pellets to keep us warm. Reducing our use of paper. It’s not glamorous. But all of it helps us reduce our own environmental impact as much as we can.
As an organisation, we address threats to the planet in many ways. Lobbying governments to tackle issues such as climate change and illegal logging. Pressing business to cut flights, avoid dirty fuels, and assess and reduce their water footprints. And encouraging local communities in the developing world to help safeguard habitats and wildlife.
But we’re well aware we have our own impact on the environment. So we’re doing our utmost to reduce this to an absolute minimum.
We work across the world, so inevitably we have to get on planes to support our field programmes or to lobby at international meetings. But we recognise that we need to reduce our air travel. So we’ve joined our own One in Five Challenge to cut 20% of our flights within five years.
We’re determined to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from travel. In FY09, we cut our air travel emissions by 26% compared with the previous year. Our staff use the train for most UK and close European destinations, and our web-based conferencing system is very popular.
We’ve cut our energy use by 5%, thanks to changes such as installing new eco hand-driers and clever technology that ensures our electrical equipment consumes less energy. And at our Scotland office we cut our gas use by 90% thanks to a new boiler fuelled by wood pellets.
In the past year, we’ve also reduced the amount of paper we use in the office by 30%.
We hope that by challenging ourselves in these and many other ways, we’ll be even better placed to inspire others to make positive changes to their ways of life.
Read a full account of our environmental performance in our latest Environmental Report.